I got attacked in a previous town meeting for not supporting another national park in this country, a 200-mile trailway. And I told the man that we don’t need more national parks in this country, we need to actually sell off some of our national parks, and try and do what a normal family would do is — they wouldn’t ask Uncle Joe for a loan, they would sell their Cadillac, or they would take their kids out of private schools and put them into public schools to save to money instead of asking for their credit card to increase their debt ceiling.

Watch it:

Our national parks represent America’s heritage, held in trust from one generation to the next.

Despite Stearns’ idea for a national-park fire sale, the facts show that parks, monuments, and other protected places generate a steady stream of wealth for both the treasury and local businesses. In 2010, Florida’s Everglades National Park generated 2,364 jobs and over $140 million in visitor spending, and Florida’s 11 national parks in total provided $582 million in economic benefits. The National Park Service also reports that America’s parks overall created $31 billion and 258,000 jobs in 2010. In addition to their economic impacts, national parks have important value in that they are available to all of us for recreation, not just the wealthy few.

The 60-day legislative session that ended Friday was largely dominated by small reforms on a few pocketbook proposals. Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led legislature honored their pledge not to raise taxes, an article of faith for them in an election year. But to fill a $2 billion budget gap, they cut $300 million from universities and colleges, $1 billion from state worker pensions, and made another round of deep spending cuts in prisons, health care and social services…The $70 billion budget eliminates an estimated 4,400 state jobs and continues to rely on a three percent reduction in state worker salaries.

The budget includes a grab-bag of giveaways to various industries, including aviation companies, real estate brokers, and fruit packinghouses. It also increases the size to which a business needs to grow to qualify for the state’s corporate income tax. All told, the tax cuts will cost $2.5 billion over the next three years.

Scott has promised that these tax cuts will help jobs “grow like crazy.” However, that confidence belies the fact that Scott has been walking back his job creation promises since coming into office. He even flatly denied promising to create 700,000 jobs, in addition to those created by natural economic growth, despite video evidence showing that he most certainly did.

State legislatures are busy debating another round of anti-choice legislation (after passing a record number of anti-abortion measures in 2011). But this year, women are speaking up more loudly.

To push back against the Republican-backed proposals, Democrats have proposed satirical bills mocking extreme measures bestowing personhood on a zygote and requiring women to have ultrasounds before abortion procedures.

And constituents have voiced their opposition, rallying against cuts to funding for women’s health care, ultrasound bills, and personhood measures. And the protests are spreading.

In Georgia, hundreds protested on Monday against two anti-abortion bills approved by the state Senate. One would prevent state employees’ health care plans from covering abortion, and the other exempts religious health care providers from having to cover birth control:

Demonstrators held signs saying “Trust Georgia women” and “My body is not a political playground” as they walked around the Gold Dome. They chanted “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate.”

“I don’t think that a few men in this state have the right to take away the rights of women,” said Suzanne Ault, 48, of Atlanta. “It’s not their call to make, the health and life of a woman.”

And in Wisconsin, demonstrators rallied today against a push on the last day of the state’s legislative session to pass several anti-woman bills. The measures would prevent private insurance plans from covering abortion, add barriers for women seeking abortions, and end a program to provide information to teenagers about avoiding unintended pregnancies.

Yesterday, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) signed an unconstitutional law that purports to target courts applying religious law, but which is almost certainly part of a broader push by Islamophobic advocates to fight the imaginary problem of courts substituting Islamic law for American law. The brief bill Daugaard signed provides simply that “[n]o court, administrative agency, or other governmental agency may enforce any provisions of any religious code.”

While it is uncommon for American courts to apply religious law, it is not unheard of. Private parties sometimes enter into contracts where they agree to resolve their disputes under something other than U.S. law, and individuals sometimes write wills devising their property according to the tenets of their faith. Under the bill Daugaard signed, however, courts will be allowed to enforce contracts requiring disputes to be resolved under French law or ancient Roman law or under the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition rules, but they won’t be allowed to enforce contracts requiring disputes to be resolved under the requirements of someone’s religious beliefs. This is discrimination “against some or all religious beliefs,” and is therefore unconstitutional.

New Hampshire state Rep. David Bates (R) is continuing his quest to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage lawwith a new amendment that would simply reinstate the civil unions law from 2007. This is different from his previous proposal — now withdrawn — that would have instituted civil unions that anybody could have refused to recognize. Also, the new amendment would allow the 1,900 already-married same-sex couples to stay married.

Here’s how Bates’ new amendment would play out:

The legislature would vote to repeal marriage equality and implement the civil unions law as it was passed in 2007, a change that would not take effect until March 31, 2013. This would require a super majority, because Gov. John Lynch (D) has promised to veto any bill that takes rights away from same-sex couples.

In the meantime, voters would have the opportunity to respond to a non-binding question as to whether they agree with the decision. The vote would have no legal impact, but would indicate to lawmakers essentially whether voters like the repeal or not.

If voters approve the repeal, it proceeds as planned next March. If they reject it — and pollsshow a strong majority opposes Bates’ bill — then the legislature would have to act again before March to overturn its own repeal, but would be under no obligation to do so.

Besides being convoluted and a direct attack on same-sex couples’ rights, Bates’ plan has a number of other complications. Consider the bill will now offer civil unions that would actually be recognized, Republicans will have to go on record affirming same-sex couples’ rights whether they vote yes or no on the bill, an ultimatum they might not be pleased with. Further, any repeal will surely be challenged in the courts under the same precedent that the Ninth Circuit just ruled California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional — that once a right is granted, it cannot be taken away.

Republican lawmakers have until March 29 to bring the bill to a vote in the House without requiring a suspension of the rules to introduce it.

Independent expenditure-only “super PAC” committees have accounted for a stunning 91 percent of the television campaign advertising over the past month in Alabama and Mississippi — the two states holding their Republican primaries today. But while the more than $75 million already spent nationally by these groups has undoubtedly altered the dynamics of the presidential race, it has also annoyed the vast majority of Americans.

A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that nearly 7 out of 10 adults don’t just dislike super PACs — groups that can accept unlimited individual and corporate donations to run ads to support or oppose political candidates; they want to see them to be banned entirely.

The survey question was:

Organizations known as Super-PACS can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on behalf of candidates they support. (Supporters say this is a form of free speech) while (opponents say this allows groups or wealthy individuals to have unfair influence.) Do you think it should be legal or illegal for these Super-PACS to operate?

A whopping 69 percent of the more than 1,000 respondents said they believe it should be illegal for super PACs to operate. And 52 percent of those polled said they strongly support a ban. Just 25 percent said they believe super PACs should be allowed to operate in the U.S.
Even 55 percent of Republicans want an end to super PACs.

Super PACs became legal in 2010 after an appellate court ruling in the Speechnow.org v. FEC case. This ruling was, in large part, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial ruling earlier that year in the Citizens United v. FEC case. Under the court rulings, Congress could not simply ban super PAC’s legislatively.

With a Montana campaign finance law currently under judicial review, the Supreme Court has a chance to correct its mistake and overturn these rulings.

After being postponed for several weeks, the Tennessee House Education Committee is again set to address the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill today, which would ban schools from ever discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-8. Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has reiterated his opposition, calling the bill a distraction and Rep. Joey Hensley’s (R) efforts to advance it a waste of time:

HASLAM: He knows and understands that, as I’ve said before, is not something I think is particularly helpful or needed right now. Again, I think the state already has rules in place about what can be taught.

Hensley, meanwhile, seems convinced that if he continues to tweak the bill, he can make it somehow palatable, though none of the changes made so far have actually altered its function. For example, the big change he made was to remove the section that banned providing “any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation other than heterosexuality” and replace it with a provision that limits all teaching to “natural human reproduction science.” The obvious inference, as Hensley has clarified, is that this still rules out any instruction on same-sex orientations because only heterosexual couples can reproduce.

Either way, Hensley is trying to erase LGBT youth from Tennessee schools. As long as that is his goal, there’s nothing he can do to polish this bill to make it any less dangerous or offensive.

Conservative radio host Rush Limabugh continues to bleed advertisers even after he apologized for his vitriolic attack on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, and a new Rasmussen poll suggests why — most people don’t think he was being sincere. Just 29 percent of likely voters believe Limbaugh’s apology was earnest, while 53 percent think it was insincere. Indeed, Limbaugh use his apology to advance his false narrative about Fluke’s congressional testimony and to attack liberals.

In recent years, Utah has earned a reputation for being one of the reddest states in the country. Indeed, less than 35 percent of 2008 voters in the Beehive State cast their ballots for the Obama-Biden ticket. But a new poll by Brigham Young University shows even Utahans are not backing the growing “abstinence-only” push by the right-wing.

In recent weeks, the state legislature passed HB 363, a bill to prohibit Utah schools from teaching students about contraceptives and to permit school districts to skip sex education entirely. The bill passed easily in the Republican-dominated state legislature (the GOP has 22 of 29 seats in the state senate and 58 of the 75 seats in the state house). Republican Gov. Gary R. Herbert has not yet said whether he will sign the bill.

Utahans, according to the BYU poll, would prefer that he veto the measure. Of those surveyed, 58 percent said they believe “”Public schools in Utah should teach about the use of contraceptives.” Only 30 percent said they should not. Only among those identifying as “strong Republicans” was there widespread (68 percent) opposition to the idea.

Chris Karpowitz, a political science professor at the university, told the Salt Lake Tribune:

The thing that was interesting to us was such a strong majority believed public schools should teach about contraceptives… Utah is a fairly conservative place, and you might have assumed that this would have gone in the other direction.

I think it means the governor has a tough decision to make, and he has to decide whether he’s going to side with the strongest Republicans who seem to have the most opposition to this — and that’s an important group for any Republican governor in the state of Utah — or is he going to side with the larger majority that seems to support this.

Hebert’s quandary is a microcosm of the challenge the Republican Party faces nationally: appeal to a narrow but vocal base that wants to pursue a culture war against contraception and women or focus on the real struggles of working families.

Movies are rarely precisely what you expect going into them, but it’s rare that I’ve attended a movie with so few hopes as I had for 21 Jump Street, Jonah Hill’s seemingly-unnecessary remake of the classic television series about cops gone undercover in a high school starring Johnny Depp, and emerged so thoroughly happy. Gone are the after-school special themes of the original, and in their place is an anarchic, often quite sweet action comedy about an odd couple on the trail of a synthetic drug that still manages to take on issues ranging from rising tides in popular opinion as represented by high school students to angry black cop cliches, represented here by Ice Cube. As he explains to Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Hill) after they’re reassigned to his squad following an unsuccessful stint on bike patrol, he’s black, he’s a cop, and sometimes he gets angry.

The movie’s smartest, most subtle move may be its imagination of how, in the five years between Jenko and Schmidt’s graduation and their return as undercovers, high school has changed dramatically. Out with the muscle cars, and in with the vehicles powered by leftover cooking oil from the Chinese place. Acing your admission to UC Berkley is the new cool. Gay kids of color are fully integrated into the popular crew. Jenko, who finds himself displaced in the new hierarchy, the meathead slouch and eagerness with a punch that served him so well five years ago now liabilities, blames all the changes on pop culture, declaring “Fuck Glee!” But he’s liberated by the chance to set off bottle rockets and exchange lightsaber secret handshakes with the nerds, just as Schmidt gets another chance at creating decent high school memories. And while it’s not as if movies from Clueless to Ten Things I Hate About You to Mean Girls haven’t been delineating new cliques for years, there’s something refreshing about 21 Jump Street‘s suggestion that there’s been a fundamental shift in values.

It takes nothing away from that articulation that it’s embedded in a very violent, very funny, very silly action movie. It’s a delight to see Channing Tatum, who never quite seems to be taken seriously even as he’s done everything from staying light on his feet in Step Up; to playing wounded and violent in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (the movie that Hill says made him want to work with Tatum on 21 Jump Street); to putting in a turn in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies; be loose and profoundly goofy. If he wants to, Tatum could develop some of the antic physicality of Vince Vaughn. And while I’ve often found Jonah Hill a somewhat distant presence, the opening sequence in the movie, when he’s a trembling, bleach-blonde Slim Shady clone who harbors no more baroque dreams than attendance at prom is tremendously endearing (even if it harkens back to my senior year a decade ago rather than to 2007). Watching them bumble through action sequences that simultaneously honor and point out the ridiculousness of the conventions of the genre is a delight, particularly in one sequence where they blow up a truck full of chickens.

The women are negligible. Ellie Kemper is funny in a tiny turn as a teacher who can’t quite stay within the bounds of propriety when Jenko shows up in her AP Chemistry class, for which he is manifestly unprepared. Brie Larson has slightly more to do as Molly, the vivacious high school senior who become Schmidt’s ticket both to school’s main dealer and to membership in the popular crowd. But Jenko and Schmidt’s relationships with women isn’t really the point—as Tatum said after the screening when asked about his transition from romances to comedies, “well, it’s a bromance.” And it’s to Jenko that Schmidt turns after a moment and trauma and realization, telling him “Okay, let’s make a baby.”